How to Further Your Own Learning With Various Texts - Week 1 Assignment

"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives." (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9)

Discussion

I have found the increase in the variety of texts and the variety of text uses to be rather remarkable, and have found myself gravitating towards them all. From text books, to paperback novels, to online blogging, and social media, I have delved into them all for various purposes and uses, and have had both good and bad experiences with them all. 

Some of the texts that I use more often than not, and will likely refer back to as I begin to learn more and discuss this topic further are blogging sites like Tumblr and Livejournal [Blogger is new for me], online forums and message-boards such as the Dis-boards and Wowhead, online news sites such as cnn and TimesUnion, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. My use of these texts vary from gathering information, reading and writing for pleasure, and sharing and receiving advice on various topics of interest. 

When reading the editorial written by Diane J. Wilbur in the Digital Culture and Education online journal, I was struck by something she said; "...new literacies change so quickly, they can be thought of as deictic, or dependent on the context on which they are used at the moment they are used." The truth of this statement becomes obvious the more time you spend browsing digital texts in particular. 

As an example, the other night I was reading an article on cnn.com regarding an illness in Massachusetts related to a particular type of shellfish. I thought it was interesting, and so when I went to click on the article once more to read it aloud to my significant other, the article had been removed! It was not replaced or even edited, and so whether or not the information I initially received was inaccurate in some way, I will never know. But it happened so quickly, in a matter of seconds - which I almost found hard to believe. Even so, this is, to me, a prime example of the rapid pace the information we obtain through new literacies can change and be altered, rendering the information we gained just moments before useless. [Of course, this could have a great deal to do with the lack of editing in online forums, but I am sure this is a discussion for another time]. 

Even so, I believe that these various texts do have their plus-sides, the main one being that information is now available right at our fingertips. Searching for movie-times, breaking news, and the weather [as an example], has never been easier; and I believe that such easy access to a knowledge base can spark the desire to search new topics and expand existing knowledge on certain subjects. To refer back to my original example of the shellfish article, during a desperate Google search to find the article somewhere else, I learned that back in August, there was an outbreak of illness in Connecticut linked to clams and oysters, as well as other shellfish, due to high levels of the naturally occurring bacteria Vibrio parahaemolticus.

reference:
Diane J. Wilbur http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/uncategorized/dce_editorial_vol2_iss1_2010/